


A Shift in the Sands

by Settiai



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Community: femslashex, F/F, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-07-28 19:12:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16248041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Settiai/pseuds/Settiai
Summary: One of the first things Leia noticed after she was thrown into the small bedchambers that had been assigned to her was that she wasn't alone.





	A Shift in the Sands

**Author's Note:**

  * For [outruntheavalanche](https://archiveofourown.org/users/outruntheavalanche/gifts).



One of the first things Leia noticed after she was thrown into the small bedchambers that had been assigned to her was that she wasn't alone.

She hit the ground hard as the guards shoved her inside, and she took advantage of the fact that she was fluent in Huttese to let them know exactly what she thought of them, Jabba, the Hutts, and Tatooine in general as the door slammed shut. It wasn't that she particularly expected them to listen to her. It was more the principle of the matter. If they expected her to simply give in, they were sorely mistaken.

After a moment or two, once Leia was certain the guards weren't coming back, she pushed herself to her feet. She was still muttering a few choice curses under her breath, well aware that most of the people who had known her back on Alderaan – her parents included – would have been horrified to hear even a small portion of those words coming from her mouth. Honestly, a fair number of the people who knew her through the Rebellion might have been caught off guard by it. It was as if they thought she was still a girl with her hair in braids rather than the soldier she had been for years now.

Then she heard something moving behind her.

Leia stopped cursing abruptly as she spun around, shifting her body into as defensive a position as she could manage. Who knew who or what else might be in the room? She'd learned the hard way over the last few years to expect the unexpected.

The chamber was dark, lit up by a single dim light in the ceiling that barely deserved that title considering how little it actually illuminated. Leia narrowed her eyes, watching warily as she tried to find the source of the sound.

In the corner of the room, a shadow moved. Leia clenched her hands into fists. It looked like a humanoid, at least, but that didn't mean much.

Not for the first time since she'd been stripped out of her armor and shoved into the skimpy outfit that Jabba apparently felt was more appropriate for one of his prisoners, Leia missed the various weapons that she'd had hidden on her body. There wasn't anything in the room to use as a makeshift one, at least not that she could see. She supposed Jabba didn't want to risk his slaves having anything that could potentially put him at risk.

"Who's there?" she called out, keeping her voice as steady as possible.

The shadow moved again as the person making it stepped into the light. As they did, Leia felt herself relax almost unconsciously.

It was a green-skinned twi'lek woman with wide eyes and an uncertain expression on her face, wearing a similar outfit to the one that Leia had been forced into. There was a large bruise on her neck that was such a dark green that it was almost black, shaped suspiciously like the metal collars that Leia had seen on a few of the slaves she had passed in the corridor outside. It would have taken someone fighting back with quite a bit of strength to cause that type of bruising.

She got the impression that the woman standing there wasn't the type to simply sit down and accept her fate. Leia could appreciate that.

Leia tilted her head, thinking back for a moment to language lessons from years past that she'd almost forgotten about. "Hello," she said quietly in Ryl, drawing the woman's attention to her instantly. It wasn't proper Ryl, of course, since she didn't have any lekku of her own, but she thought that the bastardized version used by the various races other than twi'leks and togrutas was better than nothing. "What is your name?"

The twi'lek woman replied in a string of rapid-fire Ryl, her lekku moving so quickly and subtly that Leia doubted she would have been able to keep up even if she was fluent.

She quickly held up a hand. The woman went quiet, tilting her head a little to the side.

"I only speak a little Ryl," Leia said, stumbling a little over the words. She couldn't remember the last time she'd spoken the language. Perhaps with General Syndulla? It had to have been years since her last attempt. "Do you speak Basic?"

There was a pause before the woman nodded slowly at her. "Yes, I speak some Basic."

The twi'lek woman's words were heavily accented but still fairly easily understandable. Leia gave her a small smile. "I'm Leia," she said, watching the woman's face carefully for recognition. There wasn't any, at least that she could see. "What's your name?"

The woman hesitated for a moment, her eyes moving up and down Leia as if she was trying to figure her out. "I am Oola."

Leia purposefully let her smile grow a little larger, trying to make herself seem as nonthreatening as possible. "It's nice to meet you, Oola."

After a short pause, Oola nodded at her. "You as well." She paused, clearly hesitating, before adding: "You are Jabba's new slave? To replace me for fighting back?"

Leia gave her a half-hearted shrug. "I'm not certain about that last part," she said, shaking her head, "but I _am_ his new slave." She paused a moment before adding more softly: "For now."

Oola narrowed her eyes at that, clearly reading more from those last two words than Leia had intended to show. The woman definitely had a keen mind. Still, she didn't call Leia out. All she did was give a brief nod. 

"He will want me to teach you," Oola said. "To show you what is proper for one who is serving him. That is why he spared me." Her eyes flashed a bit, and her next words had a bit of a bite to them: "I am worth too much for him to use as food for the rancor. Even if he was tempted."

Leia made a mental note to find out more about this "rancor" that the woman had mentioned. For the time being, though, her attention was focused more on the present.

"So you're going to show me how to be a well-behaved slave?" Leia asked. She was almost tempted to roll her eyes, but years of diplomatic training kept her from doing so.

"Yes," Oola said with another nod. Then she shot Leia a quicksilver grin, as if she was letting her in on a secret. "For now."

*

Leia wasn't certain how she would have made it through the past few days if it hadn't been for Oola. The twi'lek woman was clearly in some type of disfavor, presumably from the "fighting back" that she'd mentioned, but she hadn't wanted to say any more on the subject and Leia hadn't pushed her. Oola was quick to do exactly what Jabba asked of her, without any defiance or complaint, and Leia didn't think anyone else saw the anger flashing in her eyes from time to time. The woman was good at hiding her true emotions behind a mask.

Still, Oola was a good teacher, and Leia was a fast learner. Between the two of them, they quickly made certain that Leia knew what she needed in order to keep her head down until Luke could arrive to set their back-up plan in place.

Leia just hoped that said back-up plan was better than the last version of it she had heard. Luke was many things, but an expert at strategizing wasn't particularly one of them.

"You have a plan?"

Leia looked up. She'd been sitting on the floor, playing with the cuffs around her wrists and looking for any type of weakness in them. Oola was sitting on the bed that they'd been sharing since her arrival, her legs pulled up in front of her chest like a child.

"I'm not certain what you mean," Leia said carefully, her gaze darting towards the door and back. She didn't think anyone was spying on them, but there was never a guarantee.

A smile flickered across Oola's face, and she nodded knowingly at the door. "If he will end up dead, I will help," she said quietly in Ryl. "Just tell me when."

Leia stared at her for a moment. She couldn't say that she was particularly surprised, not really, but the offer had still managed to somehow catch her off guard. Eventually, she nodded. "You will be able to tell when it is time," she replied, hoping that her Ryl was passable enough for Oola to understand her.

Oola hesitated slightly before nodding. Then she patted the bed beside her.

"Come," Oola said, switching back to Basic. "It is getting late. We want to be well-rested when the master calls for us in the morning."

Leia made a face, but she didn't argue. She had never been much of a dancer, at least not when it came to the type of dancing that was considered appropriate for Jabba's palace, and the last few days had left her with aches in muscles that she hadn't even known existed. Oola had done her best to teach her what she needed to know to survive, but some things could only get better with the passage of time.

She flinched a little as she pushed herself to her feet, and Oola immediately narrowed her eyes.

"Are you sore?" she asked.

Leia nodded, albeit a bit reluctantly. She hated admitting to any weakness, but it wasn't really as if she had any other choice. Especially since it would be obvious that she was lying if she tried to claim otherwise.

Oola gestured at the bed again. "Lie down here," she said. "I will try to help."

"I'll be fine by in the morning," Leia protested lightly, even as she followed Oola's instructions. The other woman had kept her alive so far. She wasn't going to begin arguing with her now.

Ignoring her token protests, Oola brought her hands down onto Leia's back and started massaging her shoulders. Leia couldn't have stopped the relieved groan that slipped out even if she had tried.

"You get used to it," Oola said softly. Leia could hear the smile in her voice.

Leia sighed. "I'm hoping that I won't be here long enough to get used to it," she said, her own voice just as quiet. It wouldn't do to be overheard, even by accident.

Oola moved her hands lower, working on Leia's lower back instead. "Where will you go?" she asked in Ryl. "When it is done?"

For a moment, Leia hesitated. Then Oola's hands moved a bit lower, towards her aching thighs, and she let out a sigh of utter relief as some of the pain in them faded. "I have friends," she said in Ryl, trying to keep her explanation as vague as she could. "Jabba is not the only evil in the galaxy that we want to destroy."

Oola's hands stilled momentarily before she continued the massage. It was enough to let Leia know that she had understood exactly what it was that she hadn't said. "That is a large evil," Oola said. She sounded as if she was frowning, but Leia couldn't see it from the angle she was at. "It would take many people to bring it down."

"Yes," Leia said simply.

Oola hesitated for a moment. "Perhaps you could use one more."

Leia raised her eyebrows and shifted in place so that she could actually see the other woman's face. Oola was staring at her curiously, but there was a hint of darkness in her eyes that Leia hadn't quite expected to see there. She supposed everyone had their reasons to hate the Empire. "We could always use one more."

The corner of Oola's mouth turned up slightly. It wasn't quite a smile, but it was close. "Then we will see what happens," she said. "Turn back over. I am not done yet."

Leia nodded and followed her instructions.

Without another word, Oola went back to her massage. Her hands moved carefully over Leia's body, somehow finding the right spots without any issue.

Leia closed her eyes for a moment, simply taking in the sensation of Oola's hands on her skin. The other woman clearly knew what she was doing, moving from ache to ache and soothing them away more quickly than Leia would have thought possible without some type of technology to assist. She knew that she would still have some stiffness the next morning, but that would be much easier to push through than the more severe soreness she had been expecting to have.

"Thank you," Leia said, her voice barely above a whisper. She'd slipped back into Basic without realizing it, but she was too tired to try to translate into Ryl. "You're good at this."

Oola let out a laugh behind her. Then she leaned down and pressed a quick kiss against Leia's bare shoulder, there and gone so quickly that Leia might have thought she was imagining it if she had been remotely prone to such things. "I have had practice," she said, also in Basic. "You are much more attractive than who I usually do such things for."

Then, without another word, she went back to the massage. Leia just hoped she wasn't familiar enough with human anatomy to realize just why she had flushed red at the compliment.

After a long moment of silence, Leia shifted slightly. "Tell me about yourself?"

This time, Oola didn't hesitate in her massage, but Leia could still hear the surprise in her voice. "Only if you will do the same."

Leia smiled. "Of course," she agreed. "I'm not certain where I was born, but I grew up on Alderaan..."

*

Oola wrapped her arms around Leia in a tight hug as they stared down at Jabba's still corpse, pressing a kiss against the corner of her lip as she did so. Leia hugged her back, blushing a bit at the kiss but not protesting. It was surprisingly nice to have someone there beside her.

They hadn't necessarily set their plans in motion with the intention to kill Jabba the Hutt, but Leia would be the first to admit it was a pleasant bonus to their rescue mission. Luke had told her some of the stories that he had heard growing up about the hutts, Jabba especially, and the last few weeks had made it clear that they hadn't been exaggerations.

"He is gone," Oola said quietly, her voice barely audible over the hubbub happening around them. "I am free." She shot Leia another one of those quicksilver grins of hers. " _We_ are free."

"One down," Leia said. "An Empire's worth left to go."

Oola's smile dimmed slightly, but it didn't entirely go away. "Yes," she said. "It is not over." 

Most of Jabba's guards and minions hadn't noticed that their master was dead yet. They were focused on the fighting happening below them, their attention caught by Chewbacca, Han, Lando, and Luke. Two slaves were of no importance to them. Or, at least, that's what they thought.

It would be their downfall, just like it had been Jabba's, if Leia had anything to do with it.

"We need to go," Leia said, forcing her mind back to the situation at hand. Part of her wanted to spit, to befoul Jabba's remains, but there was a part of her that felt like it wouldn't be proper no matter who or what he had been in life. Even if Alderaan was no more, a part of her would always be its Princess, and there were some things that simply were not done.

Oola apparently didn't have any such compunction. She pulled away from Leia long enough spit right on Jabba's sunken face. "Good riddance," she muttered in Ryl. "I had hoped his death would be longer and more painful."

Leia smiled at her. "Come on," she said in Basic. Her Ryl was fine for private conversations, but she didn't trust its accuracy enough to use in a potential life-or-death situation. "We need weapons." She paused, glancing down at the chains that still bound her wrists. Oola and she could move somewhat, but they were limited until they could get rid of them. "And to get rid of these chains."

Oola nodded at her. Then, without even a moment's hesitation, she spun and flung the chains still connecting her wrists around the neck of one of Jabba's guards who was running by. The only sound he had time to let out was a choked gasp before all of his air was cut off.

It took surprisingly little time for the man to slip unconscious to the ground at her feet. Oola somehow managed to get his weapon out of its holster with her foot, kicking it upwards so that she could grab it with her still bound hands. It was both graceful and extremely impressive at the same time.

Leia stared at her.

"The chains have their uses," Oola said with a smile. For once, it actually seemed to reach her eyes. "I have been dancing since I was small. I am well trained in many things."

"If you do come with us, you'll have to teach me that," Leia said, not even trying to hide how impressed she was just then. The only thing she had ever seen come close to that were a few of the acrobatics that Luke had been practicing recently, and those had clearly been heightened by the Force. She didn't think that was the case for Oola. It was entirely her own skill.

Oola's cheeks flushed a bit darker than usual, but she merely nodded. "We should find a weapon for you as well," she said. Then she glanced down at the chains looped around her. "And, as you said, we should get rid of these."

Leia opened her mouth to agree, but before she could say anything she was interrupted by the familiar sound of Binary coming from behind her. She spun around, her eyes going wide with relief. "Artoo!"

The small droid was already poking at her chains, clearly searching for the weakest point. Leia glanced over her shoulder and gave Oola a grin. "That's one problem solved."

Surprise flashed across Oola's face for a moment, but it quickly shifted into something that Leia couldn't quite read. Her mouth twisted upward into a grin to match Leia's as she held one of her hands out towards the droid as well.

The other she used to grab Leia's hand and squeeze it tightly.

*

Leia woke up to Oola's arms wrapped around her. She blinked a few times, somewhat disoriented from the nightmare she'd been having, before she recognized the walls around her as belonging to the _Falcon_. It had been weeks since they'd left Tatooine behind them, and she still sometimes woke up thinking she was back in Jabba's palace.

Moving carefully so that she didn't disturb the sleeping woman beside her, Leia slipped out of her loose grip. The metal of the ship felt cold under her bare feet, but she didn't feel like going to the trouble of finding her boots. It would make too much noise. She'd learned from past experience that Oola was a light sleeper, and the last thing she wanted was to wake her up.

Leia leaned down to tuck the blanket they'd been sharing a bit tighter around Oola. It had come free when she'd slipped out from under it, and she didn't want the other woman waking up. She wasn't as used to the cold of space as Leia was.

With a tiny smile playing at the corners of her mouth, Leia turned and slipped towards the cockpit. She wasn't entirely certain who was flying the ship, but she'd take any of them just then. Anything was better than lying awake, staring out into the darkness while trying not to wake up Oola.

And at least she knew she'd have company in the cockpit. Despite the ship being on autopilot, they'd had enough troubles lately that none of them wanted to risk it dying on them with nobody there to see it. The three pilots currently on board had been taking turns sitting in front of the controls just to be safe, even when they probably didn't have to be there.

"Couldn't sleep?" a familiar voice asked as she stepped inside the cockpit.

Leia's smile grew a little wider as she dropped down in the empty copilot seat. While she wouldn't have minded talking with Chewie or Lando, she had to admit that she'd been hoping it would be Han piloting. It looked like luck was on her side.

Han narrowed his eyes when she didn't answer his question. "Another nightmare?" he pushed.

Then again, Chewie and Lando would have had a bit more tact.

"Something like that," Leia replied tiredly, reaching up to brush a few strands of hair that had come loose out of her face. "How are things up here?"

Han rolled his eyes, but he didn't call her out on her blatant change of subject. "Everything's fine," he said with a shrug. "How's your girlfriend?"

Leia stiffened slightly. 

He glanced over at her and grimaced. "Hey," he said, "I didn't mean it like that. I told you, it's fine with me as long as it works for her."

For a long moment, Leia didn't say anything. Then she forced herself to relax, even if she didn't particularly feel like doing so. A part of her wondered how long she was going to have to fight that instinctive fight or flight reaction.

"I never thought you'd be the sharing type," she said quietly.

Han shrugged at her, a tiny smile on his face that she doubted he even knew was there. "What can I say? If you're happy, I'm happy."

Leia gave him a tired smile before leaning back in the chair and closing her eyes for a moment. She hadn't realized until recently just how peaceful the _Falcon_ could be sometimes. For the first time in a long time, she actually felt like she had something akin to a home, even if it was nothing like the one she had lost.

It wasn't going to last but, while it did, it was a nice change of pace.

"Leia?"

Her eyes shot open at the familiar sound of Oola's voice coming from behind her. She turned around in her chair so that she could see her.

Oola was standing in the entrance to the cockpit a bit hesitantly, like she wasn't certain whether or not she was welcome there. She was wrapped in the blanket that Leia had left on top of her, and her face was hidden in shadows thanks to the angle Leia was looking at her from.

"I was hoping you'd show up," Han said cheerfully. He gestured over at Leia, shooting her an exaggerated wink that Oola most likely couldn't see from where she was standing. "Will you take her back to bed? She doesn't get enough sleep."

Leia glared at him, but she didn't think that she did quite a good enough job at hiding her amusement when all it did was prompt another wink from him. She made a big production of pushing herself out her seat and walking over to Oola, looping her arm in the other woman's.

Oola smiled. "I will be glad to take her to bed," she said, clearly speaking to Han even if she was looking at Leia. Then she hesitated slightly, her gaze drifting over towards Han as if she wasn't certain how he was going to react. "I cannot promise she will get much sleep."

After a short, surprised pause, Han threw his head back and laughed. Oola looked startled for a moment, as if she hadn't been expecting that particular reaction, before her mouth twisted upwards into a smile.

Leia let out a sigh. "Well, you can't say that I don't have a specific type," she said dryly before leaning over to press a kiss against Oola's cheek.

Oola shifted her arm so that it was looped around Leia's waist. "Come back to bed," she said teasingly. "As Captain Solo—"

"Han," he said firmly, cutting her off. It wasn't the first time that he'd told her to call him that over the past few weeks, but Leia knew he kept hoping it would be the last. So far, it hadn't been.

Oola nodded at him. "As Han said," she continued, "you need rest."

Leia raised her eyebrows. "Eventually?" she asked dryly, switching to Ryl.

"Yes," Oola said with one of those bright smiles of hers, switching languages with much more ease than Leia had. "Eventually."

**Author's Note:**

> Find me over on Tumblr. (http://settiai.tumblr.com/)


End file.
